We've just been reading World Vision Australia CEO, Tim Costello's chapter in the recent Australian Institute of Management publication, Love @ Work. It looks like we've been reading pretty much the same books as Tim over the last five years. Well, that's probably an...

August means leaders for AFR BOSS. Each year in August BOSS publishes its True Leaders List. This year is the sixth edition of the list. One of the things it does for Spiral Path is to make us stop and think about how our feelings about leadership have developed over...

Friday's Financial Review carried an article entitled "Sex Case: It was friendly"* The article is about a sexual harassment case brought by a partner in one of Australia's (and the world's) largest companies "alleging 'a culture of discrimination, harassment and...

As a teenager in 1969, I was on holiday in Perth with my family staying with my father’s parents in their old home. One morning something happened that I remember vividly but I think I have never spoken of before. I was thinking about waking up and drifting in...

Hmmm, Telstra has decided not to proceed with its FTTN rollout. Interesting use of the Shareholder Value concept. SpiralPath understands that Shareholder Value is supposed to be a solution to the agency question. That is the "principal" (ie owner) wants to do...

Why do we organise? I've been thinking about this question lately. A more fundamental questions is why do we work? A lot of people would laugh at this question with the simple response "we work to earn money." I was discussing this with a client recently after we had...

Welcome! I am pleased to let you know this blog has a new name - The Spiral Path chriscurnow.com has been going through a revamp over the last few months. You may have notice that typing chriiscunow.com into your browser took you to a website about me. I am pleased...

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the warm and fuzzy Stakeholder Theory and Corporate Social Responsibility are the cold hard Agency Theory and ‘Shareholder Value’ approaches Agency Theory Agency theory first arose in the 1970s and was apparently...

Origins and development of Corporate Social Responsibility and Stakeholder Theory I've wondered for a long time how the belief in Shareholder Value came to dominate corporate thinking. I started reading around this topic to try to understand how this came to be....

I've been thinking a lot lately about how corporations came to be and how they came to be so powerful. There is nothing wrong in my mind with powerful corporations. More important is how they exercise their power and what moral, ethical and legal power we have to...